The Lustful Vegan

We collected the first of our CSA produce this week, and lo, there were many greens. After a hot start to spring this year our weather turned cool and very, very wet. It’s rained almost every day for weeks! This has been great for the greens but not so great for the rest of the veggies. Nonetheless, I was very excited by our first CSA haul, which included spinach, some sort of leaf lettuce, chinese cabbage, a mystery green, chard, radishes, baby green onions (they’re like particularly chubby chives), and dill. My housemate also grabbed us a pint of luscious strawberries from the farm, which were almost gone 24 hours later.

Needless to say, that many greens means salad. Strawberries mean salad too — a handful of fruit really does perk up a bowlful of greens. I was also excited to discover that you can eat radish greens. Who knew? (Probably everybody but me. ) They’re a little prickly to handle, but just fine torn up into salad. Apparently you can steam and sautee them like spinach too. To store them, this site suggests trimming them off the radishes, washing well, then storing them wrapped in paper towels or a plastic bag.

Last week I got to taste a Chinese dish that used pickled mustard greens. It was quite tasty, and today I discovered you can pickle radish greens too. You can also make a quick pickle of the radish bulbs, which I’m thinking might make a tasty sushi filling. I saw a comment online suggesting the pickles are great on pad thai. Mmmmmm. Though right now my new favourite thing to do with radishes is roast them. I got the idea from this site, and I’m forever grateful. Roasted radishes don’t have the fire of fresh radishes. In fact they turn out sort of like very juicy little white potatoes. I make mine in the toaster oven, which has become my favourite tool on hot days — I toss a single serving of asparagus or squash or fiddleheads or (now) radishes in to roast, and serve the results on salad. Makes for a yummy lunch.

But getting back to the radishes, I do mine almost the same way that Bloxham suggests. I cut a half dozen or so in half, toss or spritz them lightly with oil (garlic or spicy or sesame oil all work well), add a touch of salt and pepper, spread them out on a parchment paper covered pan, and roast for 25 minutes at 375F. Then I toss them again with a drizzle of sesame oil, another of tamari soy sauce, a coarsely chopped clove of garlic, two chopped green onions, and a couple sprinklings of raw sesame seeds. They go back into the toaster oven for five minutes, et voila, an unusual roast veg to liven things up.

One last radish-related tidbit: At the permaculture workshop I did this spring, the presenter explained that radishes are a great fast crop for gardens. You can use them to fill in empty spaces while you’re waiting for slower-growing veggies to fill out. Just sow the gaps with radish seeds, and pull them out when the bigger vegetables start needing the space. The radishes will grow quickly and keep weeds down, and give you something tasty to play with just a few weeks later.